Putting relationship first

I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship.
I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend.
And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important.
Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone.
I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time.
I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.
I need to do my damnedest to be there for that.
Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known.
When she dies.

I think this is one of the most beautiful notes I’ve ever read and easier said than done, isn’t it, to put relationship over career. That Fiona Apple is writing about her dog does not bother me. I do wish we’d hear this more often about people, though, and actually applaud it. Seems to me that when women put relationship with their children or husbands over career they get lambasted for denying the sisterhood in some existential feminist struggle.

Comments

Well, um. The problem is that many women put personal life ahead of their careers (or, more commonly, jobs) all the time, which does not translate into happy, professional workplaces. I’ve had to deal with women managers who simply lost interest in work once they got a boyfriend, or who advanced my handsome male colleagues because they clearly had crushes on them, or even–in one case–quit her job without giving notice because she had met a man online and was going to Australia to marry him. It’s not that this kind of behaviour makes it harder for men to take women seriously–I don’t know if it does. It’s that it is so horrible working with women when they would really rather not be there and take out their frustration on subordinates or leave the bulk of the work to their colleagues.

I’m sorry you had to experience that, Seraphic! Now that I think about it, I do know plenty of women who are very lukewarm about their work but stay put for the benefits, and this at the expense of their relationships–their young children, primarily. I do not think I’ve ever experienced women quitting because they had a boyfriend, as you describe below. I work in a male-dominated arena, however, so this may be why.